Bradley Cooper Is Steven Soderbergh's Man From UNCLE

Now, only one of our spies is missing. Bradley Cooper has been offered the role of Napoleon Solo in the upcoming Man from UNCLE movie. Steven Soderbergh is still shopping for an actor to play Illya Kuryakin, Solo’s Russian counterpart.

The film is scheduled to shoot in the spring, before Soderbergh closes out the current phase of his creative career with a HBO biopic of Liberace and retires to home, apparently to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark five times a week, always in black and white.

According to Variety, Soderbergh previously offered the part of Solo to Johnny Depp who passed. I’m sure the shoot clashed with something altogether more lucrative and possibly rum sodden.

You likely recall that George Clooney had the part until old age a bad back meant he had to step down. With all due respect to Cooper (which is obviously tempered by the massive amount of rubbish he’s been in) I’ll miss Clooney, I think.

*At least assuming that there still is a Kuryakin. Will it make sense in a post-Cold War world to have a Russian character? Could there be a little bit of reinvention on the cards?